


Circuit

by unendingexhaustion



Category: Original Work
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Body Horror, Cybernetics, Cyborgs, Dystopia, Gen, Medical Horror, Original Character Death(s), Psychological Horror, Robotics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 18:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5976562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unendingexhaustion/pseuds/unendingexhaustion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recycling at it's best.</p><p>Written for 2016 Scholastic Art and Writing contest, recipient of a Silver Key award.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circuit

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I'm looking for critique and also trying to get started as a fanfiction author, so I'm putting this out there as an example of my writing to see if people would be interested in seeing more (and also maybe requesting stuff at unendingexhaustion.tumblr.com to help me get started)

Her feet pound through the underbelly of the city, hurdling garbage and discarded machinery and sending up great splashes of the shallow, filthy water that has overtaken this particular alleyway. They’re on her tail, catching up fast: heaving breaths and splashing feet giving away her position to the cybernetic implants that enhance her pursuers’ senses. She leaps over a length of rusty chain-link fence and keeps running. Left, left… Hard right! Now! Hurdle that bent pipe, it hurts don’t stop (do you want to die - get ripped apart - put back together wrong and cold and dead)!? Her pursuers are tireless, synthetic muscles don’t burn and ache like hers. Grimy neon signs flicker overhead, their reflections effectively blinding her to any danger that lurked beneath the shallow water. In any other situation she would have gone slowly through this area, wary of crippling holes or deadly-sharp hunks of scrap metal hidden by a thin sheen of oily water, but there’s no time for caution with the Corporation bloodhounds on your tail.  
They’re getting closer. It’s funny, how in retrospect it had all seemed like a good idea. Right, noble even. The Corporation has no right to mold human lives or bodies, especially without the consent of their owners, but the government is in its pocket. Even the best people can be convinced to abandon their morals if fed enough money. It had only been protests at first, and she had been proud to be part of it, to be doing something for the good of the world. Then came the riots, the broken glass and fire. None of them had wanted it to degenerate like this, but too late. Masked Corporate soldiers moving too precisely to be human had slaughtered and arrested indiscriminately outside the Corporate hq, but she had escaped. She and the other five, the ringleaders of the revolution. She curses, stumbling over one of the sunken holes she had disregarded when planning this mad flight. Shit! A wall up ahead. Crumbling, brick, easily climbed, but she can hear them behind her, eerily silent but for the splashes of their feet and the faint whirring of their systems. She scrambles at the wall, halfway up: a weapon cocks behind her, two-thirds and all she knows is the loosening of her bleeding fingers in the white flood of pain until there’s water then nothing.

01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 01101100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100110 01100001 01101001 01101100 01100101 01100100 _ overlay:failed

Error code 200-0123: memory integrity compromised._

First there is nothing but a quiet humming. Awareness meets a blank canvas as ocular interfaces connect with the occipital lobe, and then there is white. It is blank, only registering because it is not black. The infant intelligence knows subconsciously that this frame of reference is far too small, and pushes towards the cold/not-cold spot that promises the safety of the mother program within the confines of this new self. Suddenly there is cold and noise and movement, diaphragm expanding and contracting to the beat of an unknown heart. The intelligence recognises itself now. Breath in, breath out. It knows how to move now, and turns its head to see the hoses and cables hooked into its body, disappearing beneath grey and waxy skin, forcing life into dead flesh and cold metal. It(she) knows now, numb fingers finding their way to the raw, cold hole in her chest, exploring the plastic that holds it open, and remembers pain. She(it) flexes her toes, remembering filthy water and muddy ground, but she is suspended from an armature above a concrete floor (error: conflicting information but.. no! It’s real). The silver-grey fibers of her exposed thigh muscles spasm when she sees them. Exposed veins and arteries of clear plastic twist over it, filled with dark fluid. This should hurt, it doesn’t (query: why?) but the answer comes to her with the white coats and warm bodies and trays of shining instruments. Incomplete. The thought fills her with peace. They will fix her, remove these conflicts, the bugs in the code that throw uncertainty at her, a creature too new to understand. The warm ones babble to one another as they prod at the unfeeling amalgamate of flesh and artifice, and do not notice the slight upturn of her blue lips as she slips back into the dark. 

“Scorpion XV has passed all tests in regards to ability, and the deviation from standard behavior does not stem from programming errors. In fact, it may assist in blending in while hunting, as it mimics human behavior patterns. All in all, the only thing she needs to be out in the field is your approval.” Scorpion stands silently behind her programmer and waits. She is shown five files. Five faces. Five targets. They trigger an itch at the back of her mind, some niggling memory, but she suppresses it. There’s a job to do.


End file.
